By JAN HERMAN
Just to wrap up yesterday’s item: Leave it to the Vienna Philharmonic to treat not only
its critics with contempt but also its allies. It backed out of a discussion on WNYC’s VPo-friendly
Soundcheck about the orchestra’s discrimination against
women and minorities after saying a representative would appear (provided he didn’t have to face
the two scheduled feminists who have actively criticized the orchestra). So program host John
Schaeffer instead dutifully read a VPo press release denying discrimination. Meantime, Los
Angeles Times music critic Mark Swed filled in for New York Times classical music editor James
Oestreich, who also backed out.
My favorite moments came when Schaeffer, working overtime as devil’s advocate for the
orchestra, was soundly rebuffed by VPo critics Abbie Conant and William Osborne when he asked
the tired old question: Is it worth sacrificing musical quality by hiring a woman who places second
to a man in an audition for the sake of ending discrimination? They replied by asking, why are we
supposed to think women are inferior in the first place? And why — considering that female
graduates from the VPo’s feeder school, the Vienna Academy, outnumber male graduates — are
men about 10 times more likely to be hired by the orchestra?
Swed, a gradualist who at least made the case that the VPo must change or become a
meaningless institution, unfortunately got some of his facts skewed. He cited the Berlin
Philharmonic as an exemplar of positive change, noting that it has filled its ranks with many
women when, in fact, women represent 13 percent of the orchestra 24 years after they were first
admitted. He said the Vienna Phil now has “people from Japan.” In fact, it has just one and he’s
been dismissed as of the end of the season. Swed also said the VPo has about 200 members. It has
149. And he gave confused details about rehearsal personnel and conductors. For the record, the
Vienna Phil has never had a woman conductor. Also for the record, you can listen to the
broadcast online here.
Finally, was it irony or lack of shame that prompted Schaeffer to end the segment with an
excerpt of the Vienna Phil playing Strauss’s “The Emancipated Woman”?
